‘Designing Strategies’ Newsletter
May – June 2014 Volume 11 — Issue 59
I’m convinced that there is no limitation on where a small business owner can experience important sales and marketing lessons. Last night, I was enjoying my drive home from dinner with a friend from my high school days. (I’ll spare you just how long ago that was.) The weather was wonderful. It had been a bright sunny day, not too hot, not too cold, with a pleasant breeze. It was getting dark by the time I headed home. I’d missed sundown, but the sky over Berlin Reservoir was a combination of blue, coral and grey hues, reflecting off the water. With the windows down, the sweet aroma of honeysuckle bushes along the highway was an added plus. Sounds perfect, right?
Whack! My perfection was interrupted by something hitting my windshield. A huge splattering of giant bug guts spread itself all over the driver’s side. No problem; I turned on the windshield wipers, squirted out some washer fluid. My plan was to get back to enjoying Nature. Hah! Bug guts seem impervious to basic windshield washer fluid. My wiper blades just smeared the bug remains across an even larger portion of the glass.
The next day, I took a few minutes between appointments to run the car through a car wash. I needed to see out my mucked-up windshield for safety’s sake. Besides, the car had been through several messy storms in our area. And, a bird had left a large, messy calling card on my paint job. It was time. I was surprised to learn several important sales and marketing lessons from that trip to the car wash.
I pulled up at the end of a short line of cars waiting to get into the car wash. An attendant came running out to share the daily specials with me. He started in to explain two daily specials. First, for only $10, I could get the basic exterior wash, “Sheenology” (spray wax) and a ‘tire shine special’. Or, for only $15… you get the idea. The attendant started rattling off a list of seven or eight things they would do to my car as it rolls through the machinery. I stopped him about halfway through the list, as my eyes glazed over, to tell him I’d take the $10 deal. Waaaay too much information in Option #2 for me.
4 Important Sales and Marketing Lessons
• Lesson #1: Don’t give customers too many choices or deals that are too complex for their minds to process easily. A better delivery of the $15 deal might have made me want it, but I never got past the ‘eyes glaze over’ phase and took the simpler, cheaper option.
The short waiting line moved quickly and within a few minutes I was inside the wash area receiving my preliminary spraying with a pressure washer. The windshield was already beginning to look better. My car started moving slowly through the wash process. I immediately noticed something new. Colored, scented soap foam was being sprayed on my car. Blue, orange and green foam was running down my windshield, blending into a nice rainbow.
The scent coming in through my vents was a pleasant, outdoor smell – a bit flowery. It was not the dank, damp, slightly moldy/mildew odor that usually accompanied my car washes of the past. Moving on through the process, I found that the waxing product had also been colored and scented…green and tan this time. Subtle reminders of nature, perhaps? They process was definitely appealing to as many of my natural senses as possible.
• Lesson #2: Don’t assume customers or prospects understand your industry terminology. Drop the jargon. Keep it simple and understandable. All of the marketing-speak names for their processes made no sense to me at all, and it cost them money.
• Lesson #3: Appeal to as many of the natural human senses as you can to increase chances of making a sale, creating a positive customer experience and pleasant memory the customer can draw on when they need your products or services again. A marketing concept is more effective when senses like smell or sound are applied. More sales are closed when using sensory and emotional triggers.
Attendants wiped my car dry to eliminate water dripping and spotting on the paint. They added a little elbow grease to get remaining crud off the windshield and bumpers. I drove off, quite pleased with myself for getting this done on a busy day. Driving off, all water streams dried off my windshield, I noticed one last thing.
• Lesson #4: Automatic car washes won’t necessarily get every speck of bug guts off your windshield. Sprayed on water, soap and car wash ‘scrubby fingers’ don’t take the place of good old fashioned elbow grease.
How to Apply Important Sales and Marketing Lessons to Your Systems
Think through your sales and marketing processes and systems. Analyze what works and what doesn’t work. Develop some new strategies to improve the processes and systems. The effort will pay off as you gain more attention from prospects.
How can you simplify your processes and offers? Simplicity almost always works better than unnecessary complexity. How can you appeal to more of the natural human senses? What can you do to help customers form pleasant memories of your company, products and services? Is your product line offering just too broad? Do your sales and marketing systems add unnecessary confusion to your customer buying process?
Take these important sales and marketing lessons and apply them to your company, its products and services. Well, at least the first three lessons. Number four is more of a general lesson of life.
Image by © Royalty-Free/Corbis
